


Like Atlas and Castores (Trapped under and in the Sky)

by Hedgi



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: All abord the pain train, Angst, Gen, Wally's in the speedforce and everything hurts, kinda introspective a bit, pain and suffering, reaction to 3.15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-10-01 08:48:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10185476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hedgi/pseuds/Hedgi
Summary: Wally is trapped in the Speedforce, trapped in Savitar's place in an eternity of color and sound and pressure, knowing that Savitar will make his move any day--any minute--and he is powerless to stop him.Savitar's words through his mother's form were not lies. Wally is not alone in the dark.Reaction to 3.15 and a potential identity of Savitar





	

Wally West thought he knew fear, capital F Fear, the night Zoom stole him from his bedroom, the smell of lightning-charred plaster burning in his constricted lungs and the dark chain clamped around his wrist.

He’d thought he’d known pain when his fingers closed over the smooth Stone and lightning lanced through his body, sparking down each vein and nerve ending.

He’d though he’d known desperation and grief when he’d learned his mother had only months left, when he learned what he’d lost with the erasing of Flashpoint, when he’d learned of Iris’s future fate.

That all paled in comparison to this, a fading sickle moon to a sun going supernova. Power, raw speed, tore like dark fire through him, in him searing tendons and boiling marrow, shattering him along each line and sealing back together. It flooded lungs he wasn’t sure were whole, had ever been whole, pressure tight over—inside—his eardrums like twenty feet under water or 500 feet in the air or both at once. Everything flamed out, pulsing like a too-fast heartbeat; air didn’t seem to exist as that blue light closed around him.

The pain didn’t stop. The pressure and fear kept their hold, the only framework keeping all the pieces that had been Wally West together, prevent him from scattering like the fragments of a meteor as it dies, shredding and burning in the atmosphere. He could see and yet he couldn’t, Rorschach figures like the images against tight closed eyelids, blue and white and gleaming against something that seemed more than mere absence of light.

There was sound. His own voice? The rush and roar like wind filtering through the suit and his coms as he ran? Someone else, screaming? He couldn’t tell, he couldn’t understand the sounds as he fought, desperate and afraid, to be whole.

He didn’t know how much time had passed before he could think, clear thoughts, aware of more that the crush and pull of pressure. He was inside the speedforce, and he could not get out. His legs, his arms, nothing worked.

Pinned like a bug to a windshield, a passenger in a car out of control and leaving nothing but burning rubber in its wake, he tried to breath. It was like breathing in water, breathing in flame, but somehow, through the agony, his lungs filled and released and filled again. Something stung his cheeks. The pain never loosened.

He became aware of the emptiness, and then the images. Flickers of scenes, moving too fast to understand, too fast to see. There was a flicker of yellow, the goldenrod of his suit, then a flash of blue the same shade as his mother’s old car, a gleam of the smooth brown of his hand, of Iris’s hand, the dark grey of concrete at night, the brilliant white of lightning. Wally fought again to pull his eyes closed as the images, the colors, ran together, faster and faster, blurring colors he knew with colors he didn’t, memories with things he had never had.

Time passed. It had to have, but again it didn’t seem to, days or seconds or years all the same. Eternity, Wally remember Savitar had said. Eternity. Sunday school lessons had spoken about Eternal life, about how the death doesn’t end anything, about how after the world finally stops, life keeps going. Wally had never given much thought to those lessons, but now he felt like he understood. It seemed like nothing here in this half-lit place could end, not even his own heart. He wanted it to, but it would not.

Savitar had trapped him here. Fate worse than death, a fall, and a betrayal. He had acted rashly, he had opened the same goddamn door he’d tried to seal. His fault. His fault. He hadn’t known, he’d been trying to stop it, to save—more stinging on his cheeks, more flame caught in his throat. _Iris I’m sorry. I’m sorry no please make it stop make it stop help me please–._

Savitar had been trapped here. This was what had driven him to kill, to fight, he’d said as much. Wally could see the gleaming claws, the glowing eyes set into the metal mask, into his mother’s face. What if being here twisted him, too? _No, no, no, please, he couldn’t. He couldn’t._

 _“Shhh.”_ The voice was not from a memory, and seemed too slow for this place, displacing the rush and roar. Barry had said he’d spoken to the Speedforce itself. It had taught him. Was this a lesson, a punishment? It couldn’t be, he hadn’t meant too, he’d been scared, it had been an accident. “ _Shhh,”_ it came again. A woman’s voice.

“Who’s there?” he tried to say, tried to move his head to find the speaker. Someone else was here, trapped like he was? Jesse? No, not Jesse, the voice wasn’t hers. Someone else’s. His mother’s? No. Not hers either. The pressure increased, and he felt himself move, or maybe everything else moved and he remained one solitary, stationary point, the North Star. He saw the speaker, and she saw him, a woman, skin lighter than his own though not by much, and the purple of her clothes was misty in the flickering light. Purple and white and black, dark like her tangled hair that seemed to move without wind, except there was wind, of a kind, the Speedforce still  shifting around them like a living thing. Her eyes were sad, and somehow familiar.

Her eyes, her nose, the wrinkle in her brow. She looked like Iris, but also like his mother, and like a woman he’d only seen in pictures at Henry Allen’s funeral, but he knew she couldn’t be any of them. “Who–?” Wally tried again, and then “How do we get out of here?” His way was blocked, but maybe she’d come to get him out, the way Cisco and Iris had pulled Barry home.

She shook her head. “Soon,” she told him, her voice quiet, just reaching his ears. It was tight, like she had to fight for each syllable. Wally could see the strain in her muscles, she looked how he felt. “It’s coming.”

“What is?” speaking hurt, and in the maelstrom around them golden lightning split through the mist.

“We were here so long. No one to come. No help. No way out. But there’s a way, now,” the woman said, her eyes too bright. “It’s almost over. Almost free.”

“You were here with that monster?” Wally asked, unsure if she heard him.

“Trapped for so long. Can’t think. So hard. But it’s alright now, Wallace. He’s going to save us.”

“Barry?” Wally’s heart sputtered and stuttered as the lightning continued, as the Speedforce beat against him, oblivious.

He couldn’t tell if it was mist or if she was crying at the name. “No. he can’t. He never did. Never will. Couldn’t get us out. More victims he can’t save. Had to save ourselves. Duckling and Sunrise, never fast enough, fast enough now. Only one way. He’s going to make sure this never happens, soon. So soon.”

“Who’s going to? Savitar? Savitar’s going to—.” Wally cut off as a wave overcame him, rise and fall of pressure, a splintering and setting as he tried to understand.

“Erasing ourselves is the only way. Mom and Dad will never remember. No one will. All of eternity will go on. Reset. It’s our only way out. My brother will fix everything.”

**Author's Note:**

> see y'all in hell, my dudes.


End file.
